Maybe you chose love because you have spent so much time giving it that you have forgotten what it feels like to receive it.
Perhaps you know how to show up for other people. You know how to listen, encourage, forgive, support and make room. You know how to see the good in others, even when they are struggling to see it in themselves. But, somewhere along the way, love may have become something you offered freely while quietly believing you had to earn it in return by being useful, being understanding, being 'easy to love,' staying longer than you should, or abandoning your own needs so no one else would feel abandoned by you.
Love was never supposed to require your disappearance.
In the space between, we begin to question what we once called love.
Was it love or was it obligation?
Was it love or was it fear of being left?
Was it love or was it the belief that being needed was the same as being valued?
These questions can be uncomfortable, especially when self-sacrifice has been praised as loyalty, strength or service. True love does not ask you to betray yourself to prove that it is real.
Love can be generous without being self-erasing, patient without tolerating harm, forgiving without reopening every door, and compassionate without carrying responsibilities that belong to someone else.
You are allowed to love people and still choose distance.
You are allowed to care deeply and still say no.
You are allowed to release relationships that require you to become smaller, quieter or less honest in order to remain connected.
You are allowed to receive the same tenderness you so naturally extend to others.
That includes love from other people, but it also includes the love you offer yourself.
Self-love is not pretending you never make mistakes. Self-love is refusing to use your mistakes as evidence that you are undeserving. It is speaking to yourself with compassion while still holding yourself accountable. It is protecting your peace, honoring your capacity and believing that your needs are not an inconvenience.
Love is not only something you find. Love is something you practice.
It's the way you return to yourself when shame tells you to hide, the way you remain gentle with yourself while you are healing, the way you stop chasing people who only recognize your value when you are pouring into them, and the way you decide that being chosen by someone else will never again require you to reject yourself.
You are not difficult to love because you have needs.
You are not unworthy because someone failed to recognize your worth.
You are not too much because the wrong people only had the capacity to meet you halfway.
You are not behind or delayed, you are between and this season may be teaching you that love is not supposed to feel like constantly proving that you deserve a place in someone’s life.
May the love you receive be safe.
May the love you offer have boundaries.
May the love you give yourself become the standard by which every other love is measured.
Take this with you:
I am worthy of love that does not require me to abandon myself. I give and receive love with honesty, safety and care.
